China’s Mars Mission – Burning Issues

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PREVIOUS 2011 ATTEMPT

Yinghuo-1 was a Chinese Mars-exploration space probe, intended to be the first Chinese spacecraft to orbit Mars.
But it failed

China’s Mars program started in partnership with Russia. In November 2011, the Russian spacecraft Fobos-Grunt, destined for Mars and Phobos, was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome; the Russian spacecraft carried with it an attached secondary spacecraft: Yinghuo-1, which was intended to become China’s first Mars orbiter

Since then European Space Agency Roscosmos and ISRO have been able to send orbiters to mars

Since then European Space Agency, Roscosmos and ISRO are have been able to send orbiters to Mars
China’s National Space Administration now aims to become the fifth space agency to reach Mars

The Chinese mission is named Tianwen-1 (“Questions to Heaven”) –comes from the long poem of the same name written by Qu Yuan (about 340–278 BC), one of the greatest poets of ancient China.
The mission was successfully launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on 23 July 2020 with a Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket

Tianwen-1 consists of an orbiter and a lander/rover duo, a combination of craft that had never before launched together toward the Red Planet.
The ambition of Tianwen-1 is especially striking given that it’s China’s first stab at a full-on Mars mission.
If all goes according to plan, Tianwen-1 will arrive at the Red Planet in February 2021. The lander/rover pair will touch down on the Martian surface two to three months later somewhere within Utopia Planitia, a large plain in the planet’s Northern Hemisphere that also welcomed NASA’s Viking 2 lander in 1976.

On November 22, 2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of underground ice in the Utopia Planitiaregion.
The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior.

“Specifically, the scientific objectives of Tianwen-1 include: (1) to map the morphology and geological structure, (2) to investigate the surface soil characteristics and water-ice distribution, (3) to analyzethe surface material composition, (4) to measure the ionosphere and the characteristics of the Martian climate and environment at the surface, and (5) to perceive the physical fields (electromagnetic, gravitational) and internal structure of Mars,”

NASA’s Perseverance rover is scheduled to launch on July 30.
Perseverance aims to answer questions about the potential for life on Mars, including seeking signs of habitable conditions in the planet’s ancient past and looking for evidence of microbial life. The rover has a drill which can be used to collect core samples from rocks and set them aside to potentially be collected and examined by a later mission.

Under President Xi Jinping, China has invested billions of dollars in building up its space program, even as it asserted its influence back on Earth more aggressively and pursued the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Space has been singled out by the Chinese government in its 13th Five Year Plan as a research priority, especially deep space explorations and in-orbit space craft. As well as the Mars mission, Beijing is also planning to launch a permanent space station by 2022, and is looking at sending a manned probe to the Moon possibly in the 2030s.